Time
Time! It’s been on my side since early June when I finished the 24-25 school year, but now I’m back at work full time preparing for the coming year. It’s my 29th in public education. That’s a lot of years of meeting new students and their parents, of building relationships, of loving them and caring about their futures. It’s also the first year I’m starting off wondering and worrying about the nation they will inherit. Again I know it’s never been perfect, and it’s been even less perfect for those of my students who don’t share my light complexion, but at least I was always confident our constitution would remain intact and we could keep making progress. Now we have a dark cloud and a fight on our hands and my time to fight will be much more limited. I’m determined to persist in the fight though. I learned long ago that time can’t be found and must be made.
One of my biggest personality flaws is wanting to skip ahead to get to something I see down the road; to want to take shortcuts I suppose in order to create what I see as better. I constantly have to remind myself that things take time and rushing the process weakens the end result. This is true in my personal life and it’s true in our nation. This time, we have to fix the problems; this time we have to get it all straight and form a nation where ALL are equal. Right now I want to see the taco guy out of office, knowing he holds the maga cult together and without him they fall the rest of the way apart. I want to see us electing some true progressive candidates who will move us toward a better USA. I want to see accountability for the evil enablers who have allowed what we are going through-those in his cabinet, in congress, in the SCOTUS, wherever they are. I want to see the trials that will be held, styled after the Nuremberg trials. It is hard to be patient and wait for these things to occur when I want them all right now, but I have to keep believing that spending the time will help us become stronger and better than ever before.
Time. We can see it as an enemy or as a friend. Today I’m choosing to see it as a friend, one who will walk beside us through this valley and lead us into the horizon of tomorrow. Tomorrow we will find love and unity and acceptance as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.